Until the mid-nineteenth century, performers in the northeastern United States generally employed pipe organs to rather limited effect, with endeavors ranging from the accompaniment of psalm-tones to an occasional simple voluntary. W.S.B. Matthews marks the return of Hartford native Dudley Buck as a turning point when “legitimate organ playing began to have a run outside very limited circles in large cities.” The following years saw an exponential expansion of the American organ repertory, with method books, treatises, and sophisticated solo repertory being written for the first time by U.S.-born composers and pedagogues. This music encompasses a wide range of functions, styles, forms, and technical displays, but generally derives from the studies of Buck and John Knowles Paine with professors of Mendelssohn’s circle abroad. Fortified in a retrospective technical training (derived from J. C. Kittel and J. A. Rinck), Buck and Paine reportedly accomplished remarkable feats as solo performers, the skill and finesse of which survive in their compositions.

This lecture-demonstration will confront questions of performance in American organ music from 1860-1900: it provides examples of historical instruments, instructs on the development of period technique, and lays out issues of performance practice relevant to interpretation.